When the director of photography Halyna Hutchins was inadvertently shot down by a live tour on the set of “Rust” in October 2021, it seemed unfathomable that production would never be finished – and even less that I would be responsible for reviewing the finished product one day.
“Twilight Zone: The Movie” and “The Crow” were both published despite similar tragedies (in addition to more recent examples such as “American Made” and “Deadpool 2”, whose cascaders’ deaths aroused much less attention), but it was before the Internet has so completely flattened each film in the context of its own creation. The horror took his own life when the second assistant Camerawoman Sarah Jones was fatally struck by a freight train on the first day of filming of “Midnight Rider” in February 2014, and the Facebook group that crew members began to oppose the resumption of filming had swelled at more than 10,000 members by April of the year.
And what happened on the set of “Rust” caused a storm of fire so instantaneous that most of the film’s production team – nestled together in a tent while the police and the medical staff began to address the situation – first learned that Hutchins had died while reading this subject on their phones.
As the sun went to bed that day, “Rust” had become inextricable from the calamity which had occurred in a small church in the new mexico on the 12th day of the production of the film. And while the gunsmith Hannah GUTIERREZ -REED has since been found guilty of manslaughter for its role in the accident, the lasting mystery of the reason why a live tower was loaded in this weapon – and the persistent question of the star / producer Alec Baldwin of the shadow of the shadow of his production.
“Rust” was finished for this very reason.
In order to create their own closure, a large part of the original distribution and crew met in the spring of 2023 to finish what they had started 18 months earlier. Some only agreed to do so during the direct request from the Hutchins husband, who received an executive producer credit as part of a regulation, and insisted on the fact that finishing the film was the best way to honor the memory and dedication of his deceased wife in his profession.
In this perspective, whether or not it is “rust” a good film seems to be out of words; A masterpiece did not “be worth” the loss of the life of Hutchins, and a disaster would not make his death more foolish than to begin. However, I can’t help but feel like the film – a film that is about to be thrown into a handful of tandem theaters with its low profile outing on VOD – is a critical step in the transition of the project of a cursed production to a lasting monument.
I underline the aim By examining “Rust” in part because there is so few consequences to say on the film, a competent but not a reward Western whose story is saddle with the unhappy irony of being on an accidental set. The Trigerman is a 13 -year -old orphan named Lucas Hollister (Patrick Scott McDermott, taking advantage of this sinister exception), whose younger brother depends on him to protect the ranch of the Wyoming from their late parents against wolves and other predators. One fateful morning in 1882, Lucas targeted his rifle in an intruder on all fours, only to hit a human villain hiding just above the ridge. The law holds the responsible boy despite his lack of maliciousness, only for Alec Baldwin – of all people – to save Lucas from a knot flowing by murdering all his jailers.
The two fugitives take a break for the Mexican border: Young Lucas and Harland Rust, a legendary outlaw which also happens to be his maternal grandfather. Harland has never met the child before, and – under his caricaturally gruff exterior, and layers of dialogue from Lis like “you say to any son of a dog who comes after me that he shakes his hand with the devil himself” – it is clear that the old man is impatient to catch up with lost time, even if Lucas just wants to go home to his little brother.
And therefore relatives per hour has long extends over an uneven scan of the US Southwest, hostility between them (very) slowly disgusting in something that looks like love while they escape bonuse hunters and have a hit and heart fire. These conversations are largely summed up at Harland by saying things like “it’s not a game, a boy” and “there are lifetime and there is not – try to focus on the first”, but even the most derived aspects of the Souza script resonate with an essential consciousness of the crulties of life. Although Hutchins’ memory is obviously the most palpable in the film’s sweeping views, the backlit interiors and the dark sky, it is difficult not to feel its presence when the sheriff Wood Helm (an effective Josh Hopkins), hot on the Harland path, deplores the random disease that struck its own son.
A large part of Hopkins’ performance is wasted on the triangle “good, bad and ugly” triangle – supplemented by a “preacher” lang in devil’s eyes – which unnecessarily distorts “rust” far beyond the two -hour brand, but every second of the flame is an additional opportunity to savor the beauty of a film that is not considered. Hutchins has advanced a relatively small fraction of the images that appear in the finished edition of “Rust”, because several actors had to be overhauled and their scenes were raised (the church scene was completely deleted), but the director of co-creative photography Bianca Cline honored his late collector by joining the details and the choice of lighting left in the notes of Hutchins.
Consequently, the images are not only impressive seamless, but also beautiful throughout. The film brilliant of the film is in line with the rustic elementality of its kind, while many other recent westerns have forced these two aesthetics to a direct confrontation with each other. Clokyy that “rust” can be when his script tries to navigate the way in which regrets of one generation could sow the hopes of another, the photograph of the film creates a nuanced conversation between the sorrow of the past and the promise of the future. In this case, this promise will remain eternally dissatisfied.
“Some things in this life that you cannot come back, I think,” deplores Harland. It is the only truth that the “rust” transmits too well.
“Rust” now plays in theaters and on VOD.
